Heavy Networking 498: Creating A Single Source Of Truth For Network Automation

A major automation challenge is where the information describing your network should live. You might think that your network would be best described by the config files on your switches and routers.
Actually, that’s wrong. The configuration on the devices might–or might not–reflect what you intend the network to be. Plus, network device configurations aren’t easy to integrate with the rest of an IT provisioning process.
What you require to facilitate network automation is a single source of truth. A source of truth that’s programmatically accessible, reflects intended state, and enables others to stand up infrastructure correctly without you getting in the middle of every provisioning request.
Tim Schreyack joins us today to discuss a network automation solution using Ansible and Python, and of course, a single source of truth.
Tim is a senior sales engineer at Dell Networking and has a background in network engineering and automation. He’s not here as a Dell spokesperson, and this isn’t a sponsored show.
We discuss:

* Why repeatability is the goal, and your organization’s size doesn’t matter
* The pros and cons of using Ansible and Python as a singe source of truth
* Jinja templates
* Picking a database, and NetBox pros and cons
* Automation differences in greenfields and brownfields
* Where to start with automation
* More

Sponsor: Viavi Solutions
VIAVI Solutions is a network performance management leader enabling IT teams to understand user experience so they can solve performance problems fast. Learn more at viavisolutions.com/packetpushers.
Sponsor: ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes gives you performance visibility from every user to every app over any network, both internal and external, so you can migrate to the cloud, troubleshoot faster and deliver exceptional user experiences. Sign up for a free account at thousandeyes.com/packetpushers and choose a free ThousandEyes t-shirt.
Show Links:
Powering Your Automation: A Single Source of Truth – CHINOG – June 27, 2019 – YouTube
Powering Your Automation: A Single Source of Truth – NANOG – November 5, 2019 – YouTube
Tim Schreyack on LinkedIn
Heavy Networking 452: Using NetBox As A Source Of Networking Truth – Packet Pushers